The Bay Area’s Occupy movement continues, today, with tents set up in San Francisco’s Justin Herman Plaza and protesters in Oakland’s Frank Ogawa Plaza. Iraq War veteran Scott Olsen, who became a rallying figure after being critically injured by a projectile Tuesday night in Oakland, has been upgraded to fair condition.

Demonstrations in Oakland were peaceful last night. At a general assembly of more than 1,600 people, nearly 97% voted in favor of a general strike to take place next Wednesday – November 2nd.

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, hundreds of people gathered at the foot of Market Street throughout the night. Concern over a police raid never materialized. Police have, however, called the camping area a threat to public safety, and are expected to try to clear the area of tents soon.

The movement has drawn together a diverse collection of people, including elected officials, union leaders, and religious figures. Now, religion and progressive protests in America are two things you wouldn’t necessarily put together, but as the Occupy movements continue to gain attention in the Bay Area and across the country, faith is starting to play an increasingly important role. There is, of course, historical precedent:

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: We will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

That’s the Reverend Martin Luther King. Jr. speaking at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963. That same spirit has drawn several Bay Area faith leaders into this week’s Occupy movement actions. KALW’s Brian Pelletier attended a march held earlier this week in downtown San Francisco and filed this report.

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BRIAN PELLETIER: In a scene that looks straight out of exodus, men in suits carry a golden bull on a platform down Mission Street in San Francisco. Just like the old testament, this is a lesson about false idols.

MARJORY MATTHEWS: Good morning sisters and brothers!

CROWD: Good morning!

MATTHEWS: Do you remember some time ago when they said AIG was too big to fail?

CROWD: Yes!

MATTHEWS: Well we are the 99% and we’re too big to fail! (applause)

Reverend Marjory Matthews is from Plymouth Church in Oakland and she’s part of the latest twist in the Occupy Wall Street Movement. She’s one of many religious leaders around the country giving a spiritual boost to these protests.

MATTHEWS: The prophet Isaiah said, “Is not this the fast I choose to loose the bonds of injustice?”

In New York and Boston protesters are reaching out to the faithful to join them by setting aside places within their encampments for worship. Here in San Francisco, a variety of religious leaders answered the call. Pastor B.K. Woodson from Oakland says they organized this march to show solidarity, not evangelize.

B.K. WOODSON: We’re here as clergy members, diverse: we have Christians, Muslims, and Jews, all kinds of faith, but we are united to support the Occupy Movement. What we are saying and what we have in common is notions of justice and we come to cry against greed, right? Greed is almost good now and that greed has to stop.

Seminary School Student Tony Rhodes says faith isn’t limited to those in the 99 percent. For him, marching is less about class divisions and more about helping all people rediscover a lost sense of community.

TONY RHODES: I don’t like to pit anybody against anybody else. That’s not productive. It doesn’t help us achieve living out that gospel of peace and love. Justice isn’t pitting one against the other. It’s caring for each other and being in community with each other and when we break that community that’s probably the most grievous sin that we can do as a community of faith.

Rhodes says the faithful bring an important perspective to the Occupy Movement.

RHODES: Faith gives us a strong foundation that will allow us to build a financial system that’s based on equity and justice. And will provide us, kind of that foundation to realize that we don’t need millions and millions of dollars in the bank to live comfortably. And that when we’re living comfortably, but there are thousands and hundreds of millions of people going hungry that’s not really living.

And the people that I spoke with say religious belief will play a major role in helping America retain promised-land status for everyone. In San Francisco, I’m Brian Pelletier for Crosscurrents.

You can follow KALW’s ongoing coverage of the Occupy movement at The Informant, and on Twitter. We’re “kalw informant.”

Now, we’ll turn to the most important local election that very few are paying attention to. Last year, Kamala Harris was elected to statewide office, which meant leaving her post as San Francisco’s district attorney. That caused outgoing Mayor Gavin Newsom to do something unprecedented: he appointed his police chief to replace her. Now, to defend his seat, District Attorney George Gascon will have to fend off four competitors. KALW’s Ben Trefny spoke with criminal justice editor, Rina Palta to discuss the candidates.

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BEN TREFNY: So Rina, why is this race so important?

RINA PALTA: People have a vague idea of what a district attorney does: prosecuting crimes. But also, the district attorney basically makes criminal justice policy for the county they’re in. So it’s up to the DA what sorts of crimes get punished and to some degree, with what sanctions. The district attorney decides, for instance, whether to ask for the death penalty if someone’s accused of murder.

TREFNY: So in November we’ve got five candidates in the race and we’ll be hearing excerpts of interviews from all of them shortly. This is the first really competitive election for this position that San Francisco has had since Kamala Harris was first elected back in 2003. What are the big issues that you see at stake?

PALTA: As with any election, especially one like this, where ranked choice voting is forcing candidates to band together and form strategic alliances, there are a number of dominating themes. And I’ll let one of the candidates, David Onek, introduce the first one. Onek is a member of the Bay Area’s robust criminal justice reform community and has worked for a number of organizations, like Walden House and the Haywood Burns Institute, and was also a member of the San Francisco Police Commission.

DAVID ONEK: Our criminal justice system is completely broken. We are spending so much on corrections in this state, on incarceration, that we virtually bankrupt the state of California and we’re unable to pay for all the services that would actually make us safer, like more cops, community policing on the street, like more teachers in our schools, and more services in our communities.

PALTA: At the moment, Onek is the founding director of the Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice, and he’s been working to reform the criminal justice system for twenty years. And in this race, he’s the changer, the guy who wants to step in and make San Francisco a national model, a kind of experiment in how you can do things differently with crime and punishment.

TREFNY: That sounds great in theory, but what would David Onek actually do to overhaul the criminal justice system?

PALTA: That’s what I asked Onek. Here’s what he said.

ONEK: So let’s talk about drugs for a minute. The War on Drugs has been a complete failure. The Onion had a great line a few years ago, before it became more popular, which said “Drugs Win Drug War.” And I think that really sums up where we are with the War on Drugs. Nobody can say it’s working. We need to do something different. And I absolutely will not be incarcerating people for low-level possession of drugs. It just doesn’t make sense. It’s wasting precious prison resources that should be going to serious and violent offenders. We need to provide treatment to folks who need it. We need to provide services for those with mental health needs and help people stay on the right path.

PALTA (To David Onek): So day one, coming into office, looking at your caseload, talking to your prosecutors, do you – without these kinds of programs in place already, because they exist to some degree, but not nearly to the degree that would be necessary, do you say we’re not prosecuting this, we’re just going to dismiss this or we’re going to put this person on probation?

ONEK: Well, we do have excellent community-based programs in San Francisco. I think the programs are there. We need to make sure that they do receive additional funding, as we have more offenders coming back to the county level under realignment. Both for the law enforcement and supervision side and for the community side. And so I will absolutely fight for that and we need to capture savings that are made by reducing our prison population – of course some of those savings are going to go to deficit reduction – but we need to capture a portion of those savings, what other states call “justice reinvestment,” and make sure that it’s reinvested at the community level.

TREFNY: That was district attorney candidate David Onek talking about what his priorities would be if elected to San Francisco’s top law enforcement spot. You’re listening to Crosscurrents. I’m Ben Trefny, and we’ll be hearing from all of San Francisco’s DA candidates today. I’m here with KALW’s criminal justice editor, Rina Palta. So Rina, if Onek is “the reformer” candidate, where does someone like Sharmin Bock, who’s a career prosecutor, stand?

PALTA: Everyone in this race is positioning themselves as a reformer, which if you know anything about most district attorneys races, is pretty unique to San Francisco’s political environment. Now candidate Sharmin Bock is, like you said, a career prosecutor who currently is an assistant DA in Alameda County. And she’s best known for her work going after child sex traffickers in Oakland. She’s the only woman in this race, something that’s probably going to help her at the polls, and she’s one of two experienced prosecutors running to be San Francisco’s top prosecutor. All the pieces are really in place for her.

TREFNY: Except that she’s not the incumbent.

PALTA: True, and the question is whether she lives and breathes San Francisco values, like a commitment to rehabilitation instead of prison, and life in prison instead of the death penalty for murder – things that are generally important to San Francisco voters, but are treated differently in the slightly more “tough on crime” Alameda County, where Bock has spent most of her career. When I interviewed Bock, I asked her if she was too steeped in the criminal justice system to be able to step back and look at its flaws and find innovative solutions. And here’s what Bock said about her capacity to make reform.

SHARMIN BOCK: You know, I think I’m the only one who actually has a track record of having done exactly that within the DA’s office. So you look at, in early 2000, nobody saw the child sex trafficking issue on the horizon. I saw it on the horizon. Not only did I see it on the horizon, but I have fought ever since to divert the girls who are exploited away from criminalization towards rescue. And also ensuring accountability for the traffickers. So I’m not just talking the talk, I’ve actually walked the talk. I’ve walked the talk and I’ve received national recognition for it.

PALTA (To Sharmin Bock): What concerns are specific to San Francisco and what do you think is unique about this city that you would need to tackle as the DA here?

BOCK: So I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 40 years. I moved here when I was 4 and I’m 49, and I’ve been in Alameda County as a prosecutor for 22 years. The concerns that really seem at the forefront in everyone’s minds today, I think first and foremost, there’s a crisis of confidence in our leadership. What does that mean? That means we have over 1,000 unsolved murders and over 900 unsolved rapes in our crime lab that haven’t even entered the system. That is actually scary because those cases just sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, means that the perpetrators are amongst us. And the primary responsibility of the DA has to be achieving justice for victims of violent crime. Keeping the community safe for our most violent and dangerous criminals. You can’t get there if you have a DNA crime lab in crisis, you can’t get there if you have a DA who’s a political appointee who, at every step of the way, instead of fixing the problem, has been covering the problem up.

TREFNY: That was San Francisco district attorney candidate Sharmin Bock talking about her policy priorities and criticisms of the current administration. This is Crosscurrents from KALW News, and we’re here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta, talking about the pluses and minuses of each candidate. Which brings us to our incumbent, George Gascon. Bock is very critical of him. He’s the incumbent, the presumed frontrunner, so challengers are bound to be critical of that person. We’ll get back to this issue of the DNA lab in a minute. But first, Rina, can you give us some background on Gascon?

PALTA: Well, Gascon is a man who’s been a leader in the criminal justice system for a long time. First, moving up through the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department to become second in command, and then as the police chief in Mesa, Arizona.

TREFNY: I actually first heard of him because he played a big role in standing up for immigrant rights down there in Arizona.

PALTA: Exactly, Gascon spent his time in Arizona playing foil, basically to Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who basically has taken it upon himself to crack down on illegal immigration in Arizona. And Gascon very publicly opposed Arpaio, didn’t go along with his brand of law enforcement, and testified against his actions in Congress. And that helped Gascon become so widely respected as a law enforcement officer, and it helped him get his position here as chief of police in San Francisco. The question is whether he’s now in the wrong place as district attorney, and that’s an issue his opponents are really beating on. Does this former police chief have the independence and ability to handle things like investigating and possibly charging police misconduct? Or conducting an open review of the DNA lab? Just as a refresher, there was a scandal involving the city’s crime lab a few years back, which led to the drug portion being shut down. Now, there’s a question as to whether the lab that processes DNA could also be compromised. I asked Gascon about that and here’s what he said.

GEORGE GASCON: So first of all, I think it’s really important and my opponents and I do not talk about this, most of the problems that originated with the crime lab preceded me. I came here as the chief of police, actually I was brought here to work on a lot of problems here that have been here for years. When I became aware of the problems with the crime lab, within, actually less than five hours from the time I became aware of the crime lab problem, I did a press conference, brought the public in, talked about it. I did a first level of analysis and determined that controlled substances was the major problem. We shut that down. I called the Justice Department and asked the Justice Department to come in and do an investigation and I called the DA’s office. There were some problems, but the DNA lab was working fine. There were some areas where we had problems with some of the protocols and those protocols were fixed.

PALTA (To George Gason): So let’s move on to the other issue I wanted to talk to you about and that is police oversight. Obviously there’s been some scandals with some possible misconduct on the part of undercover officers. There’s also been ongoing issues in San Francisco about Robbery Abatement Teams and about buy-busts and whether or not those are within the realm of what we like to do in San Francisco. How do you approach police oversight and making sure that people aren’t getting unnecessarily swept up?

GASCON: Well first of all, I think it’s helpful to put things into context. And if you look historically of where I’ve been, I’ve actually been a police reformer for many years. I worked very aggressively to turn around the LAPD after the Ramparts scandal. In fact, I was the one running training for the LAPD at the time and we actually went around working with members of the civil liberties community and the attorney general’s office and actually developed police training. We posted the Bill of Rights in every single classroom. More recently, when you look at the cases involving the Henry Hotel, where you have undercover police officers that were caught on video, allegedly violating people’s rights, I didn’t wait for anybody to tell me that I had to dismiss cases. We immediately dismissed over a hundred cases. So if you are an objective observer, and you look at all the things that I have done, including what I have done in the last 10 months and you would be not only supporting me, but you would see that I have taken very proactive, way above and beyond, to make sure that we have a clean trial process.

TREFNY: That’s current District Attorney George Gascon, who was formerly San Francisco’s police chief. He’s explaining why he doesn’t think there’s an inherent conflict of interest when a police chief becomes DA. This is Crosscurrents, and I’m Ben Trefny here with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. Rina, there’s another obvious concern about someone like Gascon becoming DA. And that’s that he doesn’t really have any experience as a prosecutor.

PALTA: That’s right. Gascon argues that he’s worked with attorneys and supervised attorneys throughout his career and has what is certainly a ton of experience evaluating and putting together cases. But, no, he has never worked as a prosecutor, and that could be a concern to some voters. It’s also the case that there are really only two people in this race who’ve worked as prosecutors, Bock being one of them – and only one as a prosecutor in San Francisco, and that’s Bill Fazio. Fazio is pretty incredulous that there are only two candidates in the race who have worked as prosecutors. He’s run before for DA, actually this will be his fourth try. But he says he entered the race because the other candidates, to him, are so lacking.

TREFNY: Let’s hear from Fazio now.

BILL FAZIO: Unfortunately there’s not a lot of training, there’s little enthusiasm, there’s no creativity in that office when you have a leader who’s never been in a courtroom before. Who has never practiced law. Who is a former police chief. He may have done fine in that capacity, but in my opinion, frankly, he has no business being the chief prosecutor. Ms. Bock has experience, thank God. Mr. Onek has absolutely no experience, and I’ve been with him, he’s a nice young man, he’s a professor of law. But he’s up in his ivory tower; he’s never stepped down into the dirt and grit of the city of San Francisco. He doesn’t work in San Francisco. Mr. Vu has been a defense attorney in Orange County. I dare say since he’s only lived here since April he doesn’t have a real handle on things. So all things being equal, I think I bring to the table what all the other candidates ostensibly bring.

If you look at Gascon, he’s got a background in law enforcement. I’ve been in law enforcement in one capacity or another for 35 years. Ms. Bock is an actual prosecutor, I have more prosecutorial experience than she has and all of mine is local here in San Francisco. Mr. Onek has progressive ideas; he’s been opposed to the death penalty from the very beginning whereas some of the other candidates have changed their position. I’ve been opposed to the death penalty for the last 15 years and have publicly stated I would never seek the death penalty in San Francisco. And Mr. Trinh is a defense attorney and I, too am a defense attorney at this point in time. So I’d like to think that even if someone were committed to one of the other candidates that I would be a very good and appropriate second choice in this ranked choice voting that we have here in San Francisco.

PALTA (To Bill Fazio): So if you won the election and became DA, what are some of the first policies you would implement?

FAZIO: Well, I would underscore the importance of juvenile justice, which has always been ignored. I’ve worked as a prosecutor and a defense attorney at so-called “juvie” here in San Francisco. It’s physically separated from the office and the people who work there are separated in spirit as well. It’s never been given high priority. I would make that a high priority in my office because it’s the one area where we can identify people who really don’t belong in the system and get them out of the system.

TREFNY: That was DA candidate Bill Fazio, speaking with KALW’s Rina Palta, who now joins me in the studio to talk about the San Francisco district attorney’s race. So we’re down to our final candidate.

PALTA: We are. And that’s Vu Trinh, who I’ve saved for last because he’s a bit of an outlier in this race. And that’s largely because Trinh, who until recently was a public defender in Orange County, doesn’t actually believe in the politics surrounding this race. Here’s what he says about the fact that district attorneys are elected at all.

VU TRINH: I’ve seen that this politicization of the criminal justice system has done a real disservice to the entire justice system, where we see a lot of injustices when prosecutors are more concerned with their conviction rate than doing justice and doing what’s right. One of my primary goals is to depoliticize that office, from the investigative unit, to the men and women who serve as prosecutors in that office.

TREFNY: So Trinh is running for DA despite not really liking the fact that it’s a political office he’s running for. What kinds of things would he do if elected?

PALTA: Well, one of his ideas is to digitize everything in the court system, which is a more revolutionary idea than one would think, because the criminal justice system, I’m pretty sure, will be the last market for paper products on the planet.

TREFNY: That and journalism.

PALTA: Yeah. And he also has a plan that would basically allow anyone to set up a surveillance camera on their property and hook it into a police network. Here’s how Trinh explains that plan.

TRINH: When something actually occurred in the areas where there is surveillance, we can use that to accurately identify the perpetrator. Because the way we’re doing things and investigating now is very archaic. It’s the same type of investigative process that has been used for centuries. We really need to move that along because we have an interest in protecting the innocent. And I can assure you, I’ll bet you 25 percent or even higher of people that are caught up in the criminal justice system due to eye witness identification is being wrapped up in a case where they’re clearly innocent of the crime.

TREFNY: That’s San Francisco DA candidate Vu Trihn, explaining one of his outside-the-box ideas. This is Crosscurrents. We’re discussing the San Francisco race for district attorney with KALW’s criminal justice editor Rina Palta. One of the benefits of having such a crowded race, Rina, must be having so many unique and interesting ideas floating around.

PALTA: Definitely. There’s no question that having this race be a competitive one, which hasn’t happened in almost a decade, is shaking things up a bit and also offering a kind of referendum on how the voters feel about our criminal justice system. Do they want an insider or an outsider? A reformist or an experienced professional? All of the candidates are coming to the race with different things to offer. I’d say the main drawback of this being a ranked choice election is that the candidates, by virtue of the system, are really required to be a bit guarded about the specifics of what they’d do in office, and more inclined to band together on the surface and fight for those second and third place votes.

TREFNY: Behind George Gascon at this point, who’s probably polling ahead as the incumbent.

PALTA: Exactly.

TREFNY: Thanks a lot, Rina.

PALTA: Thank you.

The polls are already open for those who’d like to vote early, but election day is November 8.

The past 13 months have been difficult for California’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Last year, a new lethal injection facility was built in San Quentin. The state spent just over $800,000 building it in response to the allegation that it’s method of lethal injection was cruel and unusual punishment.

Fast-forward to May of 2011: The U.S. Supreme Court ruling to decrease the prison population led to the creation of a coordinated shift of prisoners to county jails, a plan called realignment, which just recently kicked into gear. The plan, in essence, is the largest prison overhaul in the department’s history.

In July and October of this year, the CDCR faced another crisis. Prisoners staged hunger strikes at Pelican Bay State Prison that spread to 13 facilities and involved over 6,000 inmates. All were protesting harsh prison conditions in the state’s highly restrictive security housing units.

In the middle of all these unfolding events was the man who oversees operations for the CDCR. Or he did, that is, until retiring just last week. Former CDCR Undersecretary Scott Kernan’s last day was this past Friday. He was second in command at the department, overseeing all of the facilities and institutions including 33 adult prisons in the state.

In full disclosure, Scott Kernan happens to be related to KALW’s News Director, Holly Kernan. The former undersecretary left his post after almost 30 years working in California corrections. A few days before he retired, reporter Nancy Mullane sat down with Kernan to discuss how he got interested in working with prisons.

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SCOTT KERNAN: My mother was an employed for the prison so actually I lived in the ground of San Quentin before I got employed here, for probably 10 years or something like that. So, that was my upbringing was within the prison and living on the grounds of the prison, knowing the lifers and death row sentence inmates who had their sentences commuted and were running the shuttle buses up through the grounds of San Quentin.

NANCY MULLANE: What was it like to live there as a kid?

KERNAN: It’s just a place to live, I mean, it’s a community, you know. They have houses for employees because of the high costs here in Marin County. So it’s just a place as a recruitment tool to bring staff and my mom happened to be a employed of the department so we had house on the grounds. It was much like a regular place to live, the only difference was that you had to show an ID card coming and going through the gate.

MULLANE: When you told girls, “Come on over to my house, I live in San Quentin”… I always wondered about that!

KERNAN: I think it was an incentive actually, it could might have helped me. You know having a face for radio – it was a unique thing to get people come and check out San Quentin.

MULLANE: Did people actually come?

KERNAN: Sure, you can bring guests into your residence and look at the grounds. My window overlooked the big yard of San Quentin, so it was always interesting when there would be shots fired. Back in those days it was a lot more violence at San Quentin than there is today. But every time shots would go off me and my siblings would run to the window with our binoculars to try to see if we could figure out what was going on.

MULLANE: Was it an “us versus them” system – in other words, the people who were on this side of the wall versus… Did you see yourself as, “Here we are, we are the people who live and work here,” but then there’s all these other people who are incarcerated there?

KERNAN: I think there’s always been, and even today there’s the “us versus them” mentality. I think it’s changed a lot, certainly it has changed for San Quentin which is now a lower-level of facility and doesn’t have near the violence. And you see it, having worked at many different locations you can almost gauge sthat culture by the amount of violence that’s at that particular facility.

When I first started at San Quentin in 1983 it was a lot like that. There was a lot of violence, a lot of serious inmate/staff riots. And so the staff band together, and I think that creates that culture.

MULLANE: So, did you grow up in those teen and early impressionable 20s – what did you think about prisoners?

KERNAN: You know I spent some time… we had inmates that would do the grounds of our house, they run the shuttle that would take you all through the grounds, so I mean I literally knew some of the inmates when I grew up. I think there’s a stereotype often about inmates in the general public…

MULLANE: What is that stereotype?

KERNAN: Just that they’re bad people, scary, that they’ll kill you before they’ve looked at you. Right or wrong, intelligent or not, I think there’s that stigma and that was long not a stigma once you start to talk to people and listen. And in my 30 years in the department I certainly learned that to be the case. Talking to inmates and understanding their situations puts a human face to it, and you quickly loose that stigma of the criminal that I think is prevalent in the public.

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Scott Kernan also represented the CDCR in negotiations with the Pelican Bay State Prison hunger strike organizers. In the second half of this interview, Kernan discusses how the CDCR responded to their demands.

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KERNAN: We dealt with the Pelican Bay Prison hunger strike non-traditionally in that we didn’t take the canteen out of the inmates’ cells, so we left them with the food that they can purchase through the store. We didn’t discipline any of the inmates. We evaluated their domains and it was very public. Our house wasn’t in order. We had some problems with our policies. They had gone too far.

MULLANE: What polices had gone too far?

KERNAN: Well some of it’s conditions of confinement, and the SHU (Security Housing Unit) policy itself – you know we have about 8,000 incidents of violence in the prison system each year that have some kind of gang involvement. I mean it’s a lot of people getting hurt and stabbed. Gangs, I can’t emphatically enough say, is one of the biggest problems that the prison system faces.

We really took a sincere look at the issues that they had raised and we talked to their advocates…

MULLANE: Who’s we?

KERNAN: Me. I talked to the advocates regularly…

MULLANE: So you went to Pelican Bay?

KERNAN: I did, ultimately, go to Pelican Bay on two occasions and talk to the inmate leaders directly and admitted policies that weren’t in order. We weren’t consistent in all the SHU’s and so they were right in some of their issues. And when I say conditions of confinement, that’s one thing, but the SHU policy itself, the idea of using a validation system that places them in an indeterminate SHU environment.

MULLANE: Do you think it’s a form of torture?

KERNAN: I don’t. I really think that the type of inmates that belong in SHU, notwithstanding what I said about over-validating, I think that the people that are the head of these gangs are a tremendous threat to the staff and public and to other inmate, and need to be in an environment that’s admittedly harsh, but prevents them from communicating their wishes.

We’ve actually had three murders in the last couple weeks, but two of the murders were on SHU yards amongst Aryan brotherhoods. In all of my career I’ve seen significant violent and murders as a result of gang direction.

So what we said we would do in the first hunger strike, we said we’d made a number of changes to the conditions of confinement and it included everything from giving them calendars and watch-caps and take a photo once a year if they’re behaving…

MULLANE: Of themselves?

KERNAN: Of themselves, so they can give to the families. And other things. So we’ve implemented those changes system-wide.

The other thing was we said that we would do a comprehensive review of our SHU polices and that we would make changes…

MULLANE: Were you the one who took the secretary’s confirmation of these changes to the hunger strike leaders at Pelican Bay?

KERNAN: Yes.

MULLANE: And what was their response?

KERNAN: Um interestingly, very positive. I went there the first time and talked to them, and put out some memorandums that outlined these changes – memorandums to the CDCR policies so that the wardens at the other places could implement it.

So I went back because they were not ending the hunger strike, I went back a second time, and I sat down with them and they said, “Hey the memo that you did doesn’t say exactly what you said you would do.”

So this is what I did, I gave them the memo and I put them back in the holding cell and said, “You guys go rewrite this memo so that you know that all the inmates will understand it, and I’ll be back in a little bit.”

MULLANE: What did you do?

KERNAN: Went to have lunch. (laughs) I went and had lunch and I knew that the risk was that they would change the memo to say that I want a swimming pool and whatever they were going to want. The risk was that they were going to take this… because again there’s this very healthy distrust that they have of me, and there’s a very healthy distrust I have of them and their motivations. But again that was the fear, so I was pleasantly surprised when I came back from lunch and they had reworked the memo and had not appreciably changed what I said. So it was just a communication barrier.

So I took the memo, typed it up, signed it, gave it to them, and we distributed it across the system and that was the end of the first hunger strike.

MULLANE: What was the reaction throughout the CDCR? Did people think, “Oh, that worked. That was good.”

MULLANE: So you didn’t get a bunch of backslaps when you got back to Sacramento?

KERNAN: No. I think they view that – and again for a lot of good reasons – they view that kind of communication, especially with the leaders that we’re talking about, I mean these are the leaders of the prison gangs that lack real family, the Mexican mafia, Nuestra Familia, the Aryan Brotherhood – these are not nice people. So for us to recognize their status, one, and to actually engage them in communication to try and see if there’s common ground that we can move was not something that I think operations people will ever feel is necessarily the right way to go about it.

And to their criticism, the inmates quickly resumed the second hunger strike without good cause in my opinion. And I think emboldened that idea.

MULLANE: We haven’t talked about the fact that you’ve announced your resigning.

KERNAN: Retiring.

MULLANE: Retiring!

KERNAN: There’s a distinction in my world that’s very big! I’m retiring. I’ve had a long career as a correctional employee and I’m retiring at 50 years old, and 30 years in service you can retire at 90% of your salary.

MULLANE: Ninety percent, for the rest of your life?

KERNAN: Correct.

MULLANE: So nice. But you’re 50 years old, you’ve got a whole life ahead of you!

KERNAN: I hope so. It’s taken a lot on me, though! It’s been tough. Truly, the penchant’s really the product of a very strong union that recognized the difficult, stressful environment that peace officers especially work in in the correctional system.

MULLANE: Can I ask you if you support the death sentence, death penalty?

KERNAN: Personally?

MULLANE: Personally. You don’t know?

KERNAN: I do know, but I don’t know as undersecretary that my personal opinion… I’ve just spent the last 30 years including the last seven in a very high position within the department. And my personal belief on the death penalty is irrelevant, really.

MULLANE: What if I told you this interview wasn’t going to air until after you’ve retired?

KERNAN: I think that the death penalty and the legal costs are pretty prohibitive. I have 710 inmates on death row right now. The governor, as a result of the budget situation, made an early-on call not to build a new facility that would appropriately house the condemned inmates. And for a lot of those reasons and knowing what I know about the tough situation that San Quentin has to handle with the condemned, it’s hard for me to be real supportive at a personal level.

MULLANE: So what now?

KERNAN: That’s interesting, I really don’t know at this point.

MULLANE: You don’t?

KERNAN: I think I’ll stay involved in some way. I think the current secretary is a great guy, Matthew Cate – very dedicated, smart guy that’s done a great job. But should he ever decide to move on, because it is a non-doable job, you never know…

MULLANE: Are you saying that you would like to be secretary of the CDCR?

KERNAN: No, what I’m saying is if that opportunity came up, it would be a very competitive process, but you know… if it was a possibility in the future, I sure wouldn’t rule it out. I love the department; I’ve done it all my life, and I’ve worked with great people and see what they go through on the line, and I’d love to take a shot at trying to run this undoable job sometime in the future.

But having said that, let me go decompress for a little bit and when they come after me when this airs, I’ll say, “Forget that, I’m enjoying my golf game!” So who knows.

Nancy Mullane is an independent reporter and producer based here in the Bay Area. She won the Edward R. Murrow award for her radio documentary, “Life After Murder,” which tells the story of San Quentin inmates as they serve life sentences.

For more information about the future of California prisons go to our criminal justice blog, The Informant.

The Occupy Wall Street movement continues to develop in cities around the country and here all around the Bay. Early this morning, San Jose police arrested four protesters outside City Hall, and cited another for camping on public property.

In downtown San Francisco today, interfaith religious leaders marched in support of the burgeoning movement.

Meanwhile, in Oakland, demonstrators continue to defy the city’s orders to take down their tents.

Oakland’s encampment went up two weeks ago, when hundreds of people took to the streets outside Oakland’s City Hall in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement – and they haven’t left. Over the past two weeks, Frank Ogawa Plaza has become a veritable tent city, complete with a free kitchen that serves food daily, a medical center, a kids’ zone, and wooden pathways built between the tents.

Oakland city officials had been relatively tolerant of the occupation until last Thursday, when they issued a notice to vacate, citing health and safety concerns. So far, the police have not made a move to enforce the ban on overnight camping.

Protester Penny Opal Plant says she thinks the demonstrators are in for the long haul:

PENNY OPAL PLANT: Personally, speaking for myself, I think that the tents will stay and the tents will stay wherever they are around the country. And that if the tents get taken down that they’ll come back with more people, and that there’s Twitter and Facebook and all the telephones, and every other way that people let others know that the tents are being taken down in every city. When those words go out, people show up.

Last week, KALW’s Jen Chien and Sara Bernard spent a day at the encampment – from early morning until midnight – to learn more about its culture, rhythms, and logistics. Here’s what they found, as reported by Jen Chien.

* * *

JEN CHIEN: It’s 7:30am and some city workers at Frank Ogawa Plaza are using some very noisy, high-powered hoses to clean off the steps. There aren’t a lot of people up yet, even with all the noise. But then a sleepy-eyed man stumbles out of a tent near the camp’s main center…

SHEIK ANDERSON: My name is Sheik Anderson, I’m from Oakland, California, and I’m an artist.

I ask him to give me the lay of the land.

ANDERSON: We have a supply tent where we have clothes that are donated, blankets, sleeping bags… We have a school where we have information, we have a media tent and an info tent, we even have a little garden growing, and we have a full kitchen – no one’s hungry…

There’s no one individual that could take responsibility for anything that is done here. Everything is a collective effort.

And that’s not just for practical reasons. Unlike at most political protests, many at Occupy Oakland see this collective effort as fundamental to their aims: a promise of a new way to organize society. You can see it in action around the plaza. Over in the kitchen area, two young men are peeling carrots and potatoes in the prep tent, while two others are serving cooked food at a long table. Jamal Porter shows me around the kitchen area.

JAMAL PORTER: My name is Jamal Porter, I was born here in Oakland, California. And I’m here to assist. The front table is lined with condiments and staffed by serving individuals, who serve anyone who’s hungry. Off to the side we have our little pantry, with our oats and berries, and canned goods that people are so generously donating…

We go in shifts, we don’t have a schedule, just someone shows up and relieves someone. And then behind that is where the dishes are done. So this is going on 24 hours a day.

The high-pressure hoses have now stopped and it looks like a yoga teacher has set up for a class, but no students yet… There are some tourists taking some photographs of the encampment.

MIKE PORTER: My name is Mike Porter, I’m from Concord. I’m kind of embarrassed to say it, but I sell Direct TV. I am pedaling a bike that’s hooked up to an alternator, to power our media tent, and to charge cell phones.

CHIEN: Have you taken a shift here, for a specific amount of time?

PORTER: I just saw there was nobody on it, and I was finished eating, have some time to kill before I have to be at work, so…

The campers put down straw all over the grass at Frank Ogawa Plaza. And they’ve made a walkway using wooden pallets and boards going through the tent area. There’s a lot of tents, and among the hundreds of tents, there’s even a kids’ zone, with crayons, toys, and books. Rachel Dorney, sporting a green face-paint mustache, is watching the kids.

RACHEL DORNEY: This can be a really big driving force for the occupation. Just not being so serious all the time, and aggravated. If people would just look around and be like, “There are these beautiful kids, and the activities that they’re doing, it’s just so wonderful.” The other day we had this drum circle with the kids and it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I kind of cried a little bit, just seeing it. It was perfect. I kind of wish the world could be like this …

It’s about 8:45 in the morning, and right in front of City Hall, the yoga class now has five students, and live musical accompaniment. Over at the opposite end of camp from the central kitchen area is a first aid tent, and I notice some port-a-potties over to one side…

CHIEN: Inquiring minds want to know, where are people using the bathroom?

CARLA WEST: There are these Porta-Potties. They are getting a little full. They are serviced on a regular basis, but they might need to do it more often …

That’s Carla West, a radio producer and high school tutor who has been camped out at Occupy Oakland for the last three nights.

WEST: During Monday to Friday, nine to five, City Hall is open. I’m a taxpayer, I help to pay for those bathrooms, so I go in there and use those also.

Amanda Kolstad has been traveling back and forth from San Jose to volunteer in the medical tent.

AMANDA KOLSTAD: They’re basically offering first aid care to everybody here. Water, sunscreen, bandaids, trying to keep it a safe space. People with medical situations can come here and we’ll try and get them the appropriate help that they need.

By mid-morning, I’ve gotten a good sense of how things work in this mini-city. I’ve met a diverse range of people – different in race, class and ethnic origin, but most call the East Bay home. Even though basic parts of life continue as normal – eating, exercising, using the bathroom – there are many parts of a day in this life that are not so normal.

UNIDENTIFIED MAN: If we really believe it is possible, to organize this 99%, we have more than enough work cut out for us.

ANDERSON: So we have a bulletin board so we know when the meeting and events are.

Throughout the day, people gather to discuss topics like conflict resolution and how to propel the movement outside of the camp’s perimeters. But this is where the lack of central organization is really obvious. Sessions are rescheduled or canceled, often scattered by rumors and shifting personal agendas. And everyone’s geared up to protect the camp’s borders from police intervention, but so far, they haven’t needed to worry that much.

CARL BETFORD: My name is Carl Betford … I actually do security here, every morning from six to eight, I volunteer my time to patrol the perimeter and make sure that everything is kosher. I’ve been here since Day One, and I’ve seen a little bit of movement on the part of the police, but mostly they’ve been hanging back, probably strategizing. So we want to be able to meet their strategy with our own strategy, to resist.

Many people told me about an incident from the night before involving police presence, but the stories varied widely, showing the lack of centralized information. It reminded me of the old game, “Telephone.” Here’s how Carla West told it:

WEST: We were woken up by our security at about 5am, there were some undercover police outside, so they set off our camp alarm and woke everybody up in camp … We all woke up, got dressed, got our bags and met in the front of camp … but then we realized that we weren’t going to be raided, so we all went back to bed.

Well-known Berkeley activist Zachary Runningwolf gave a different view.

ZACHARY RUNNINGWOLF: The last couple days the police have really been flexing their muscles. And last night we spotted them down the street … 17 police officers in riot gear, they were ready to go! We were on alert, they were doing a little chase down the street … so it came pretty close…

The prolonged tension of living in such close quarters with such a diverse group has created some interpersonal conflicts – even a few alleged incidents of violence. A safer-spaces committee was formed early on, and there are workshops on peer mediation and violence de-escalation. As night approaches, everyone gathers on the amphitheater steps for the daily general assembly at 7pm.

MALE ANNOUNCER: Attention everybody, the GA will be beginning in five minutes.

It begins with an open forum. People form a line next to the mic, waiting for their turn to speak.

DANIEL KAYA: Hey my name’s Daniel Kaya. All today I’ve been trying to explain to some of my friends from my childhood what we’re doing. And they all want this clear demand set first. … We’re not on the same damn page, we’re not trying to force a hostage situation and like, “Give us this and this and this and this.” It’s not like that. It’s much more than that. This society is not serving the needs of so many people. And that’s what we have in common. In lots and lots and lots of different ways. (applause)

This is the moment when the protesters seem most united and focused – and when many people who aren’t camping with the occupiers show up to speak.

JONATHAN: Hi, my name’s Jonathan. I’m a project manager. I’m one of the 99%. I have three words for you: Move Your Money. (applause)

After the general assembly, hundreds of people remain in the camp. It’s still pretty lively. There are people all around the edges, there are people cooking, there’s a whole stew in a pot, there are people hanging out and smoking, talking, and drinking hot liquids, conversing.

T: My name is T, they call me T. I’m from West Oakland, California…

T, a young man who declined to give his last name, was recently released from jail.

T: Yeah I stay out here, I been tented up here for the last six nights, this is going on Day eight or nine, damn near … I be out here in downtown Oakland all the time, I pass through here, I job hunt… I finally see something in Oakland, when I come downtown I finally see something. I just want to be a part of it. This is very important right here; this is history. This is going on all around the world.

It’s almost midnight, and I’m still out here at Occupy Oakland. While a lot of people have probably gone to sleep, I imagine that some of these people that are up right now – it’s almost midnight – are going to stay up for the night. Definitely the security shifts will be going all night, people will probably be making food all night, and otherwise preparing for the next day of occupation.

An estimated 30 million people or more live as slaves today – working against their will for someone else. And every year, some 17,500 are trafficked into the United States. Many of these people don’t have allies, but here in the Bay Area, there’s one non-profit that’s standing with them.

Not For Sale has a self-described simple and collective challenge: “Stand with those who are enslaved, work together to free them, and empower them in their freedom to break the cycle of vulnerability.”

President and co-founder David Batstone came by the studio to talk with KALW’s Ben Trefny about the organization and its work.

* * *

BEN TREFNY: David, share a story of something you’ve seen while investigating sex slavery.

DAVID BATSTONE: One of the most startling early experiences I had was to visit undercover in Cambodia, in Phnom Penh, a group of young girls who were in a situation that they couldn’t get out of. They were young, 11- and 12-year-old girls. I had gone to Phnom Penh to explore, really to investigate: How does trafficking happen? This was very early on in my experience.

Even in Cambodia to traffic or to sell a young 11- or 12-year-old girl is something that might get you in trouble. Sell an older woman (older meaning 18 or 19 years old) and no one cares. But 11 or 12, you still might get in trouble.

So the contact took us up the back stairs and we went inside a second story living room. In there were about 15 girls of this age, 11 or 12 years old. I was pretending to be a “John,” someone who was there looking for young girls to buy.

I was with an Australian intelligence officer who fortunately was much more experienced than I was. He had a cool demeanor, pretended to play the part, whereas as soon as I saw these little girls and they were told to flirt with me… oh my gosh, I lost my cool, I lost my demeanor. But I struggled along, got through it, and we were offered to buy two young girls each. I think it was about $12.

So I remember seeing those girls, looking at them, and walking out that night. Our exit plan was we’d come back later (we had a hidden camera; we got all this on camera), but it took another three months to close that place down. But I remember not being able to sleep for a week, just thinking about those young girls and what they were going through each night.

TREFNY: So 11- and 12-year-old girls in Cambodia; 15- and 16-year-old girls in Oakland. The sex trade is a very dark, mysterious industry. How much of that is the result of human trafficking? How many people do you think, by your definitions, are involved in that against their own will?

BATSTONE: I would say inside the United States we probably have between 150,000 and 200,000 people living in sex slavery.

The average age of a girl who goes into what we call prostitution is 13 to 14 years old. Here in Oakland, young girls every day are being brought into the sex trade and they can’t get out. This is the distinction: Maybe they were convinced, because of money or some short-term opportunity, that if they sold their body it wouldn’t be so bad. But you’ll notice that these young girls have someone managing them, a pimp, who won’t let them leave and will use violence against them. This is really a problem.

When I drive down International Boulevard in Oakland, and I see a group of 14- or 15-year-old girls, I think, “Terrible! How can they make those choices? How could they ever put themselves in that situation?”

What we often don’t see is 100 yards away there will be someone, usually a man, controlling them, managing them, and not letting them leave. This really is the story of human trafficking.

There’s a great organization here in Oakland called MISSSEY run by Nola Brantley. Nola works with these 14- or 15-year-old girls. And it’s a real dangerous and tough business getting them free from their traffickers.

TREFNY: These girls who are on the streets of Oakland, a lot of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds, see the opportunity for quick money and then they get stuck in it because of whoever’s running the show for them. They’re obviously Americans. Is there a much larger trade of international people coming into the country who are part of the sex trade than people who are born in the U.S.?

BATSTONE: Yeah, very much so. You have regions. In, say, Oakland, mostly East Oakland, West Oakland, and then up to Vallejo in the East Bay, you have a lot of local, domestic girls who are trafficked, U.S.-based.

A lot of what people think of when they think of sex trafficking is the movie “Taken” with Liam Neeson. That is less dramatic. Usually you don’t have someone going into a home and kidnapping a young girl. That still happens, but it’s rare. It’s more likely that someone is drawn into it and can’t leave.

In all of the thousands and interviews I’ve done with trafficking survivors and my relationships with them, in almost every case, someone in a uniform was contributing to their trafficking. Whether it was a police officer or a customs officer, someone with authority – legitimacy according to the state – has participated in their trafficking. So they’re not thinking, “I’ll go out and find a police officer and he or she is going to help me.” They just see themselves as trapped in this cycle that they can’t get out of.

TREFNY: How, in a city like San Francisco, with massage parlors all over downtown, can one tell the difference between a legitimate business and one engaged in sex trafficking?

BATSTONE: Well, some of the things you look for are vigilance towards those who are working there – the women or men who are a part of that establishment. Also, bars on windows that prevent them from coming out. There’s also barbed wire fences that are keeping people in rather than keeping outsiders out. You’ll find that there’s heavy security around – cameras. The window shades are always pulled shut.

Part of this is that they want to maintain their own privacy and withhold from law enforcement. You’ll also find that there’s a great deal of control in the young women and men. If you’re not allowed to talk to them, they’re very frightened to say anything about their background and who they are. Most likely, there’s a risk of trafficking in those situations.

TREFNY: I live in San Francisco’s Sunset District, which is a pretty retiring, quiet, residential neighborhood. And yet, every now and then, there’s a news of a house that’s being used as an international brothel. Can you tell me what you know about these places? I’ve always been curious about how hidden it is. You can be on a street that looks like any street of houses, plain old houses, little boxes built in the ‘50s or ‘60s, and one of them, or several of them, are housing an international sex slavery.

BATSTONE: Absolutely. It’s the trend to move out of more visible, downtown San Francisco massage parlors to more residential districts. The Sunset is one of the more frequent ones in San Francisco. They still have to advertise themselves to potential clients. The easiest ways to get access to information for us is through Internet sites. They’re not that subtle in terms of what they’re offering. It’s a question of whether this involves human trafficking or is a choice by those who sell their bodies.

TREFNY: That definition is very difficult.

BATSTONE: It is. It’s hard for FBI. It’s hard for local law enforcement to make that distinction. When people are asking why there aren’t more convictions, why isn’t there visibility around the address… if it’s such a problem why is it so hidden? It’s the very question you raised.

It doesn’t take a very sophisticated trafficker to be able to tell the young women, “If you say anything, you’ll be thrown in prison, you’ll be deported, you’ll be punished. I know where your family lives.” There’s lots of reasons a young woman wouldn’t cry out for help in a public way.

So, how would you distinguish if you’re in 30th Avenue in a house? These young girls just feel trapped. I’ve been inside these places. It’s hell on earth. These five to six young girls just wait for the next guy to show up. It’s prostitution.

TREFNY: What can I do to make a difference in this?

BATSTONE: There’s lots of things we can do as individuals. We have two parts of what we have in the classical economical economics: the demand side and the supply side. We built an app where you can walk into a store and scan the bar code on a product. It will give you A, B, C, or F. Just like school, you want to get an A, not an F. The grade is based on 50 factors involved in making that product. We call it Free2Work. All people should be free to work.

I think that most of our listeners today don’t want to wear people’s suffering. They don’t want to tread on people’s dreams with their shoes, or consume people’s tragedy with their morning coffee and sugar. But we want to make sure people’s lives are enhanced in the making of the product that they’re linked to.

So we have this app that’s on the iPhone, on the Android, talking to the people on Nokia about putting it on the Nokia phones – and it’s a free download. We just launched it, so we have about 25,000. We want to get a million consumers who go into the store and make decisions based on that. That’s going to change our behaviors on the side of the consumer. That’ll have a ripple effect all the way back to the producer.

On the supply side, we want to train and equip smart activists. There’s a lot of dumb activism out there, quite frankly. It’s good, with good intentions, but what is it really going to do?

I hate those rubber arm bands. They make me think I’m doing something, but they really yield nothing. In terms of what I can do in a very solidarity way, in a very simple way, what can I do that’s actually going to have an effect, that’s going to change people’s lives?

We have all over the world these academies, and one in San Francisco. They are three-day academies. We keep them really low cost. You learn how to document trafficking in your region, how to be a first alerter, how to work with law enforcement in your community, what citizens can do that law officers won’t do. We will not tolerate human trafficking in our own backyards.

If you live in the Bay Area, as I’m sure most of you do, the Bay Area is the home of Not for Sale. Learn the difference between consequently action that actually means something, and inconsequential action that maybe makes me feel better but doesn’t really make a difference.

Not For Sale is holding a global forum this weekend on the topic of human trafficking beginning tomorrow in Sunnyvale. It will feature many of the most prominent anti-slavery activists from around the world, including Bishop Desmond Tutu, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, and boxer and politician Manny Pacquaio. Find more information on the Not For Sale website.

Bay Area cities also have varying responses to the Occupy movement. In Oakland, officials are balancing protesters’ First Amendment rights – allowing them to camp out – with keeping the area safe and clean. San Francisco officials are taking a more hard line stance, forcing demonstrators to dismantle encampments… …

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And in Santa Rosa, “Occupy” demonstrators are calling for the withdrawal of public funds from major financial institutions – and a public toilet and the right to camp out. The matter remains in the hands of the City Council, who heard the protestors’ case on Tuesday… …

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Sacramento protesters are also fighting for the right to stay overnight in a city park, but officials there are standing by existing anti-camping rules which prevent the homeless from sleeping in public places… …

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Also on Capitol Hill, California legislators are pressuring the federal government to help millions of people who are trapped in high-interest mortgages, but can’t refinance because their homes are worth less than what they owe… …

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If that happens, the help may come too late for some 70,000 Californians who defaulted on their mortgages during the third quarter of this year. Bank of America and Bank of New York both saw foreclosures jump to levels not seen in a year… …

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Our financial system may be in need of an overhaul, but so does some Bay Area infrastructure. The region ranks highest on a list of metropolitan cities with bridges and overpasses in need of repair… …

The Bay Area shouldn’t expect too much money from the state, though. Cash-strapped California is making a controversial request for medical clinics that treat the poor: pay back money used for dental services over the past year... …

In the 1960s, an immigrant from Bolivia landed in the Bay with big dreams.

Cesar Ascarrunz attended UC Berkeley and USF before he decided to try his hand at owning a business. Soon, he was running three restaurants in North Beach and eight nightclubs around the city and, including Cesar’s Latin Palace, one of the city’s most famous places to hear salsa.

In 1984 and 1988 he ran, unsuccessfully, for San Francisco’s top office, and now he’s giving it another try.

KALW’s Ben Trefny has been talking with all 16 candidates for mayor in our continuing coverage of the SF mayoral race. In this interview, Ascarrunz explains why he’s running for mayor.

* * *

BEN TREFNY: I’d like to start off by talking about your neighborhood.

CESAR ASCARRUNZ: I live in San Francisco for the last 40 years, a couple of years in the Mission District. After that they built a house for me in Bernal Heights, my very beautiful house – seven-bedroom house at the end, it was the biggest house. I moved to Diamond Heights just off Glen Park. I lived there for 25 years.

TREFNY: So tell me what you think of the Bernal Heights, Mission, and Diamond Heights neighborhoods.

ASCARRUNZ: The neighborhoods before I moved to the Mission District, my business in the ‘70s, was very dark – let me put it that way. There was a lot of crime, a lot of drugs, it was dark. At 6 o’clock, that was the end of the Mission District, including Bernal Heights and Excelsior. So when I opened Cesar’s Latin Palace in the ‘70s, I moved my business, I started bringing the light and chasing the crime out and chasing the rats away, bringing to Cesar’s Latin Palace one of the best known clubs in the world.

TREFNY: What are your top three priorities for the city of San Francisco?

ASCARRUNZ: I want to cap the corruption and the administration of the city and county of San Francisco. I want to cut corruption completely. And I’m not against the police department or fire department – I need good reinforcement. But last year in the Chronicle, front page, they put the chief of the police department made $567,000 in wages in one year. It’s there in the police records. I’m not making it up.

So the deputy chiefs, they work nine to five. They’re executives. They give to him $300,000 sick leave and $320,000. So together almost $1.2 million.

TREFNY: Now I understand that you’re saying that there are too many people in public office, they’re getting paid too much money. There are too many city employees. However with the system established as it is with so many people in political power making such decisions and being paid however much money, how would you coming in as an outsider possibly change that as dramatically as you’re talking about?

ASCARRUNZ: No, it’s very simple. When they retire, I will never get another person to replace him. Simple.

TREFNY: At best you can only have two terms as mayor.

ASCARRUNZ: That’s okay. They want to retire, they retire. Also I’m going to tell you: When one retires, I will not replace that one. I will have four security guards from the outside that are well-trained, don’t get me wrong – they are as good as the police department with guns. Fifty-thousand dollars each. I will get four for one. If they retire 10, I will have how many? Forty. If they retire 100, I will have 400 police on the streets, not on-call. We will have a fantastic city with police protection.

TREFNY: With privatized police protection.

ASCARRUNZ: Not privatizing, just contracted police protection.

TREFNY: So you talked about corruption in public office, you talked about how government is too big in San Francisco. What would be another priority of yours if you became mayor of San Francisco?

ASCARRUNZ: The money we waste on the homeless. We almost expend $800 million on homeless, on 12,000-15,000 homeless. This is the most disgraceful thing for me to even mention that. We expend almost $20 million suggesting a few people in the hospital business. Why didn’t he take care of that? Why do the guys that don’t care of that, they patronizing corruption?

TREFNY: So what’s your solution to homeless in San Francisco? Gavin Newsom had an idea of Care not Cash, which has been implemented in different ways to try to put money into services rather than giving checks to homeless people. So what would be your solution? Or would you let them fend for themselves?

ASCARRUNZ: They have been in San Francisco for the last 30-50 years. Fourteen to 15 schools have been closed – you know, safety. Excellent shape. You know what I will do? Instead of fixing the schools, I’ll petition and make room for the homeless, we don’t have to pay anything. We will save millions and millions of dollars.

TREFNY: So these would be places for them to sleep?

ASCARRUNZ: It’s a classroom. Let’s say it’s this big – that’s a beautiful housing. They have showers, water, they have everything in there in those schools. Sometimes you have to give them back their dignity, treat them like nice human beings. That’s what I did in Cesar’s Latin Palace – many benefits for homeless.

TREFNY: It’s interesting that you bring that up because a lot of homeless people are located in the Tenderloin in single-room occupancy hotels. And you’re talking about spreading perhaps the housing out around the city. There’s an issue recently in the Marina District where there was an idea to have foster kids who age out of the system live in the transitional housing in the Marina, but there’s been a lot of public outcry for bringing the possibilities of crime or lack of supervision to a different part of San Francisco. In the end, though, a lot of the Tenderloin is in a way ghetto-ized with people who are having trouble finding housing or getting on their feet. So you’re thinking about spreading this around the city more.

ASCARRUNZ: Exactly. They have those schools in nice neighborhoods. Maybe it’s not in the Marina, but there are enough capacity to put the 10,000 or 12,000 homeless. You know how much we pay for each room in the Tenderloin hotels? Eighty-five dollars a night. The best hotels in the country that are in San Francisco are for the homeless – wow, what a beautiful racket, let me put it this way.

TREFNY: So you clearly have strong opinions about ways the city should be run differently, but it’s been run the same way or similarly for quite a while. There’s a lot of political power within certain groups and a lot of elected officials, of whom there are many qualified elected officials running for mayor. How if you came into power in San Francisco would you be able to change it?

ASCARRUNZ: Oh yes, very simple. I’m a professional businessman. I used to have 200-600 employees myself. I have to know how to make money to pay the people every week.

TREFNY: This would now be tens of thousands of people.

ASCARRUNZ: This is nothing – it’s the same principle. I have the degree from college from South America studying business administration. And also I enhance my education at UC Berkeley and USF…

TREFNY: But there would be tremendous resistance.

ASCARRUNZ: I don’t think so. Because you know why? I work for the people; the people don’t work for me. That’s the difference. I made the Mission District the way it is, the Excelsior, I made myself with my money, with Cesar’s Latin Palace, 29 billboards all over the Bay Area for one year. Nobody did that and nobody will.

TREFNY: So in one minute can you tell me your pitch for why people should vote for you to be mayor.

ASCARRUNZ: I always tell people in the streets, I put 50-100 in my pocket, this flyer, and I tell them, “Do you know of the gentlemen who’s running for mayor?” They tell me, “No.” I tell them very simple: Please vote for the people you know; not the people who just want you to know, or pushing you to the media, or to whatever advertisement. You’re shaking my hand, right?” I tell the people. “Sir, I’m voting for you.” All kinds of people: black, Chinese, Latinos – the Latino vote I got it. God is giving me the Latino vote.

And you don’t have to vote for me. Vote for the people they deserve, San Francisco. Even Senator Leland Yee told me, “You are special, Cesar. You care very much for San Francisco.”

This is my town, this is my city, and I have to protect because I don’t owe nothing to nobody, and nobody doesn’t have to tell me, “You owe me something.”

Take renting an apartment, for instance. On average, a San Francisco tenant pays more than $1,800 a month on rent, according to real estate research firm Reis, Incorporated. That’s more than what you would make in a month working 40-hour work weeks on minimum wage.

So you might find it hard to believe that right now, in the heart of San Francisco, it’s a good time to buy a home for comparatively low-income earners. In the Fillmore, the city’s Redevelopment Agency is building 32 units of below-market-rate townhomes and flats. It’s part of an effort to revitalize this historic jazz district, but it’s not the first time the Fillmore has been the site of redevelopment.

Many people who lived there in the ‘60s were pushed out of their homes by a similar desire to “revitalize” the neighborhood. Now, those former residents are invited to be at the front of the line as the city considers applicants for these homes tomorrow, October 19.

Unfortunately, locating those onetime residents, and fixing the mistakes of the past, isn’t that easy. In a story co-produced by Adelaide Chen, Angela Bass reports.

Clay holds a “certificate of preference.” It could be his key to a new home. The piece of paper gives the 55-year-old bio-tech worker first rights to return to the district his family was forced to leave when he was just a boy.

DENNIS CLAY: I was displaced from the Fillmore District, oh, probably approximately 45 years ago. I didn’t know anything at that particular time about being displaced because I was only a kid. The only thing I knew – that I was moving.

Back then, Fillmore was a thriving black community with black-owned restaurants, barbershops, and jazz clubs.

RONALD GLAZE: It was a time that everybody used to come to Fillmore, wouldn’t even go downtown…

Ronald Glaze remembers the Fillmore in the 1960s.

GLAZE: …‘cause we had the speakeasies and the stores right here. And all the little speakeasies, barbecue joints, you know, little doo-wops.

Glaze’s uncle, Sammy Simpson, made a name for himself as a saxophone player in the district, performing with jazz legends like John Coltrane.

GLAZE: I’ve seen a lot of greats come through here. You like to think that what your people went through, that you can still fulfill a dream by getting back into the Fillmore, and this is where I come from, you know.

Glaze also has a certificate of preference. He hopes to qualify for one of the new homes, which are priced between $150,000 to $375,000. And for weeks, the grocery store cashier has been wading through paperwork.

GLAZE: Right now, I’m just getting it together. You know, all my W-2 forms, bank statements…

Certificate holders like Glaze are rare. Less than a quarter of the nearly 5,000 certificates issued by the redevelopment agency – back in the ‘60s and ‘70s – have been successfully redeemed.

That’s where Reverend Arnold Townsend comes in. In his youth, the activist fought the demolition of homes during redevelopment. Nowadays, he’s tracking down certificate holders and walking them through the application process on behalf of Fillmore Park’s developer, Michael Simmons.

ARNOLD TOWNSEND: One of the biggest problems with people that I run into is convincing folk that it can happen.

And, Townsend says, for many African Americans, there’s another problem.

TOWNSEND: I never hear people, black people saying, “San Francisco – man, I’d love to live in San Francisco.” It’s not considered a friendly place for African Americans to live.

But Townsend’s quest is not just for African Americans. It’s multicultural. The Fillmore District has also historically been home to Japanese Americans.

RICHARD HASHIMOTO: I would love to move back into San Francisco, but unfortunately it’s still out of reach for me.

Richard Hashimoto’s family was evicted from the district in the early ‘70s. Today, the 53-year-old is the corporate manager of the Japan Center Garage, a few blocks from Fillmore Street.

HASHIMOTO: Even I can’t afford these home prices, and I live in Vallejo now.

Because he already owns a home, and makes too much money for affordable housing, Hashimoto doesn’t qualify for the new Fillmore Park development. But his grown-up children do.

HASHIMOTO: I would love to see them move in, particularly now because my children are starting their own families. My son has a two-year-old son. My daughter has one son with one on the way.

Hashimoto used to sit on an advisory committee that gave locals a say in all redevelopment activity in the Western Addition.

In 2007, the city’s redevelopment agency, under director Fred Blackwell, began fine-tuning its policies for certificate holders.

FRED BLACKWELL: We are doing things to improve those communities – that people who lived through the bad times get a chance to experience the good times. And so, I do think that is an obligation of ours.

This obligation includes offering down payment assistance to low-income certificate holders. But the demand for affordable housing in the Fillmore may soon outweigh the supply. Fillmore Park takes up the agency’s last parcel of land in the district.

BLACKWELL: That does not mean that in the future, the agency, through its citywide housing program, won’t acquire parcels in the Western Addition and develop affordable housing in the Western Addition in the future.

So far, there are no future housing benefits for the grandchildren of certificate holders. But the city’s redevelopment commissioners have wrestled with that idea for years.

BLACKWELL: The issue that I think is important for the commission to consider is that obviously, the farther you get away from the original head of household and the people that were actually displaced, the shakier the ground you stand on in terms of being able to defend this as a housing preference.

Back in the Fillmore District, that’s a big part of what bothers Reverend Arnold Townsend.

TOWNSEND: We had always argued for years if you had built those homes when you were supposed to, right after you moved it out and tore this land down, if you had built for-sale homes, then grandparents would be able to leave that property to their children because it’s inheritable. And we believe the certificates represent value so they ought to be inheritable.

It’s a point that would have changed the lives of 70-year-old LaConstance Collins and her descendants. In 1968, the redevelopment agency evicted her from a rental property in the Fillmore. Today, she’s a certificate holder bidding for one of Fillmore Park’s 32 townhomes and flats.

LACONSTANCE COLLINS: Well because I like living in San Francisco and to buy a home here, nowadays, is impossible, so that’s why. And I never had owned a home and I just thought, you know, it would be it.

Collins is a mother of five, grandmother of 18, and great-grandmother of three. If picked for Fillmore Park, the full-time security guard could eventually hand down her home to her family members.

COLLINS: All my kids was born here in San Francisco. That’s one of the reasons I’m still here, too, ‘cause my kids don’t want to leave here.

For those working hand in hand with certificate holders, October 19 will be a big day. Azra Samiee leads home-buyer workshops. She says there’s a bigger crop of certificate holders applying for homes this time, thanks in part to Reverend Townsend’s efforts.

AZRA SAMIEE: I think it’s because we… it was a more thought-out plan. It was like, him reaching out, somebody else being there to pick them up, another person to hold their hands, so it was like a conveyor belt – I don’t know (laughs) – of people, you know.

That conveyor belt is running now, but it’s set to stop on January 2, 2016. That’s when the redevelopment agency plans to retire its certificate program – for good.

In San Francisco, for Crosscurrents, this is Angela J. Bass.

Reporter Adelaide Chen also contributed to this report. And see this map of the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency’s Western Addition A-2 project area.

In the last 25 years, women have been the fastest growing prison population in the United States and in California. Between the ‘70s and the 2000s, the number of female inmates in state prisons serving a sentence of over a year has grown by 757%.

Between 1985 and 2007, the number of women in prison increased by nearly double the rate of men. At the height of California’s prison boom, in the late 1990s, Theresa Martinez was shipped to a brand new prison in Chowchilla.

The two prisons in Chowchilla were built to house the ballooning population of women, incarcerated mostly for drug-related crimes.

THERESA MARTINEZ: And as the population grew, they were bringing busloads and busloads of women and we were filling up the rooms. At first we started with four bunks. And then more bunks got put in there, that was six. And then eight. Which is past the fire laws. Which they don’t care about the fire laws, somehow they got past that too. And there’s eight in a room now. And basically you’re told when to eat. Each unit goes at a time to eat. You have to wait in line for canteen. You have to wait in line for medical. Don’t catch the flu and have to put in a co-pay, because you’ll have to wait two days anyway.

The book’s editors Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman joined KALW’s Holly Kernan for this interview.

* * *

HOLLY KERNAN: A lot of people, women in particular, are caught up in the system because of drugs. Let’s hear a little bit more of Theresa Martinez’s on how she eventually ended up spending a long, long time behind bars.

THERESA MARTINEZ: By the time I was five, I used to self-inflict pain on myself. I remember hitting the back of my head against walls, or pulling my hair, even biting myself, out of just pure anger because I didn’t know how … I didn’t know why things were the way they were – I was too little to understand. But I wanted to know why my friends had a mother and a father and brothers and sisters, and I didn’t have any of that.

I started running away from my grandparents’ house at the age of 12, and I got into PCP, smoking PCP. At age 15 I got pregnant with my daughter. My daughter was born with 9.8 phencyclidine in her system. I was charged for that – got sent to youth authority. From youth authority I graduated straight into the prison system, adult prison system, and I’ve been on parole for the past 26 years of my life.

So you can pretty much imagine, I’m very much used to institutions; I consider them my home. I had no other way of knowing there was a better life for me. I just knew that’s what I deserved and that’s where I had to be. And I kind of adapted to the prison system to where I would come out for 90 days and it was like a vacation. Coming out to the free world was a vacation and I had to go right back in again to where what I knew, and it became my comfort zone – prison.

KERNAN: Martinez is now 45, and she’s recently gotten off of parole. How common is a story like Theresa’s?

ROBIN LEVI: It’s ubiquitous. The story of incarceration, particularly of incarceration of women in this country, is an artifact of the war on drugs. When we decided to increase the penalties for drug use, for drug sale, so astronomically – we began pouring hundreds of thousands of people in the prison system. We now in this country incarcerate more people than any other country in the world, certainly more than any other western country.

KERNAN: And why is it that women are the fastest growing prison population? That’s really happened over the last two decades.

LEVI: And that is the war on drugs. So women are being caught with mandatory minimums, and judges have less discretion in terms of sentencing. In addition women are often the lowest on the totem pole; they have very little to offer in terms of a deal. So they again end up being caught and being put on a mandatory minimum on a required sentence.

AYELET WALDMAN: Let me give you two scenarios. Let’s say before we had these mandatory minimum sentences – and what a mandatory minimum sentence says is the judge has no discretion, for this weight of drugs, you are sentenced to 10 years – doesn’t matter where you are in the conspiracy, doesn’t matter if you’re the kingpin or the lowest person on the totem pole…

KERNAN: Or if you just lived in the house…

WALDMAN: If you happened to have carried a box from point A to point B, all you have to do is know about the conspiracy and commit one overt act in furtherance of it that doesn’t even have to be an illegal act.

So it used to be – let’s take it back 30 or 40 years – a woman would come before the court whose husband was a drug dealer. She is a mother of three, and was nominally involved – took a phone message. The judge would look at that woman and the judge would say, “There are three children dependent on you. It’s ridiculous to incarcerate you. You have no history of criminal offense. Your husband was the person involved. I’m going to give you probation so you can take care of your children. I’m going to give you some kind of home-monitoring. I’m going to give you drug treatment if you’re addicted to drugs.”

Fast forward post the mandatory minimum sentencing, and what happens is that judge has no choice. One of the things you cannot take into consideration are ordinary family circumstances. We had a case where a woman had five foster children who were dependent on her, and it doesn’t matter if you have five foster children who are going to go back into the system whose lives are going to be ruined. You can’t take that into consideration. Doesn’t matter if your husband was the drug dealer and you weren’t. Nothing matters except one thing: whether you can barter information for a lower sentence.

So who barters? The person higher up on the totem pole. The higher up you are, the more you know, the more people you can rat, and the more likely you are to get a lower sentence. So we have this reverse system now where the drug kingpins are going for very little time if at all and the people who are serving the longest sentence are the lowest on the totem pole. And women are invariably the lowest on the totem pole.

KERNAN: And you touched upon the fact that there are these ripple effects which is that women are often the caretakers of children – what’s happening to all of these children who are left essentially without a mom?

LEVI: More than 66%, more than two-thirds of the women in prison are primary caretakers of children under 18. And so what’s happening is that many of these children are going into the foster care system, which is not supportive in pretty much any way, and certainly not to older children coming in. And so you can try and get your child set up with a guardian, but there’s a lot of restrictions as to who can be a guardian. So if you have any violent felony on your history, whether it’s five years ago or 10, you can’t become a guardian to that child. If you have someone else living in your house who was maybe on parole, you can’t become a guardian of that child. So like I said, these children go into the foster care system.

In addition, what the Adoption and Families Act which was passed in around 1994, they’ve really accelerated the rate at which you can get your parental rights terminated. And so if you’ve got a child under three, in California, within six months your parental rights can be terminated.

KERNAN: And what I’ve heard people say is, “Well, then why did that mother make that choice?”

LEVI: Well it’s not a choice in many ways. Many of the stories in our book … we’re talking with people who before they’ve gone to prison have experienced an enormous amount of abuses in terms of a huge level of child sexual abuse, other forms of physical abuse. Their families may have experienced drug use. And they have not been given an opportunity to get over that.

KERNAN: And a lot of women from very low-income backgrounds…

LEVI: …very low-income backgrounds who are self-medicating with drugs.

WALDMAN: We don’t have a healthcare system in this country that allows people to get drug treatment. If you’re depressed, it’s a lot easier to get drugs than it is to get SSRIs. And that’s what they do.

KERNAN: California’s prison system has been under federal receivership, essentially for not providing good enough medical and mental healthcare to inmates. Let’s hear from Theresa Martinez again who really experienced a healthcare debacle when she was in prison.

MARTINEZ: So in 1997 I was diagnosed with HIV. I was tested, I was counseled by public health, I was seeing doctors. I have lab results showing HIV viral load inside my blood. So I was treated for HIV with three different types of therapies … come to find out now, there was no actual HIV virus inside my body for these medications to treat.

So I don’t know how much damage it caused me, me being on nine years of HIV therapy, and having no HIV for a target. I’ve had my gall bladder removed. I have severe liver damage. Now I’m Hepatitis C and I have viral loads sky-high. I have this question in the back of my head that just doesn’t go away: Is it true? Do I really not have it? Do I have this special strain they don’t know about that’s going to pop up later, full-blown?

I have all these doubts and these questions still in my head, and to this day I take mental health medication for paranoia and schizophrenia because I was severely damaged behind this misdiagnosis.

WALDMAN: So this prison system was using an incompetent lab that has since gone out of business. They misdiagnosed her, how many times, Robin?

LEVI: They misdiagnosed her at least several times.

WALDMAN: They kept verifying the misdiagnosis over and over and over again. I mean she can’t even sue the lab because the lab is bankrupt and gone out of business.

LEVI: And once she got told that she was not positive, the prison denied responsibility for the diagnosis on any level, even though they had told her that she had been HIV positive.

KERNAN: And that’s another through-line in this book, which is that a lot of the women have sort of barbaric experiences with healthcare, being shackled during pregnancy…

WALDMAN: Governor Jerry Brown – progressive governor, great governor – just refused to sign a law that would have precluded the shackling of pregnant prisoners. Now it’s interesting because there’s no explanation for this beyond the fact that perhaps he’s running for reelection and has to keep on his side the single most powerful political force in the California political system, which is the prison guards’ union. But to shackle a pregnant woman is so utterly barbaric that we are among the only place in the world that does this. And any woman has ever been pregnant, who has ever experienced labor – try to imagine laboring in ankle shackles.

LEVI: And actually the veto is more shocking because they’ve actually passed a law a few years ago in California in which you can’t shackle women in prison going in to give birth. This law was actually to expand it to jails. So we’ve had it in place for a few years without any trouble whatsoever, and they’re asking to expand to jails, and then the sheriffs association, which apparently is not as powerful as the California prison guards, but one notch down, went to oppose it. And Governor Brown vetoed it. And this is the second time it’s been vetoed, and they’re going to try to put it up again.

WALDMAN: It just beggars the imagination to think that a woman who is in an act of labor would what – try to escape? Would try to do physical harm? The explanation given by the organizations that oppose this law are so patently absurd. And let’s be clear: There are many, many states that have wisely and humanely banned the shackling of pregnant women. And California is … we have in the prison system, but in the jails, where most people are, and most people giving birth are, you can’t do it.

KERNAN: Women are the fastest growing prison population in the U.S. and most people listening to this have probably never been inside of a prison. I’d like to have Theresa Martinez give us a snapshot of what it’s like inside of the California Women’s Prison in Chowchilla.

MARTINEZ: So as you come into the unit, you’ve got these really big glass windows, right? Each cell has a window in front, the door is made of glass. So you see everything: the big area, the bathroom area, the shower area. The only thing covering the bathroom is the middle of the door. You have an open environment, a big open top. So you can see the person sitting on the toilet near you. It’s the same thing in the shower. You can see all of your legs. Some women are short – you might be able to see their whole bodies.

There is absolutely no privacy in prison. There is nowhere you can go to change your top or go in privacy. The male officers do walkthroughs down the halls all day. It’s part of their jobs – I understand that. But it’s very degrading. Many times I’ve been sitting on the toilet and I’ve said, “Excuse me, can you shut the door, I’m using the bathroom please?” and they say, “I’m not trying to look at you!” They’ll call you a prostitute or a bitch or say, “I’m not trying to look at your hood street ass, you’re in prison, nobody is trying to look at you!” But the whole time they really are.

WALDMAN: And one of the things to understand is that more than two-thirds of these women have experienced some kind of childhood sexual abuse. So they are routinely exposed to these men watching them in the most intimate of circumstances, watching them go to the bathroom, watching them undress, stripping them. And for any woman, that experience is unpleasant. But for these women who have experienced child sexual abuse? It’s traumatizing. It’s re-traumatizing them every day.

KERNAN: And you’re completely vulnerable because you’re behind bars, no power whatsoever.

WALDMAN: And you have lots of instances of sexual abuse.

KERNAN: Sexual abuse, by who?

WALDMAN: Well here’s the thing: Everyone always assumes that when you go to prison, the other prisoners are going to rape you or do something to you. For women, the truth of the matter is that when sexual abuse occurs, as it does so frequently, it is the guards, the medical officials, the wardens. Those are the people that are abusing women in prison. Not, by and large, the other women.

KERNAN: Do you think it’s common? I’m worried there is a tendency to demonize the correctional officers.

LEVI: I have two things to say to that. In my experience of doing this work in the California prison system for more than 14 years, I’ve maybe, at most, heard of one case of a woman inside the prison sexually abusing another female prisoner. And I’m saying that to leave that open to possibility – I can’t think of a specific case. I have stumbled upon dozens and dozens and dozens of situations of staff abusing women, because of the power differential in a variety of ways. Sometimes you’ll hear of a basic forced rape situation. You’ll have the privacy violations.

Very often you’ll have sexual exchanges for favors. And these are favors like an extra phone call, or hairbrush, or shampoo. Or favors to maintain visits with your child, because guards can restrict visits with your children. And that’s what you hear so, so often. I don’t think we are demonizing the prison officials because that’s the reality of what we’ve seen.

KERNAN: And you’re both lawyers so you’ve dealt with this issue for a long time and have access and understanding of the judicial system that most people don’t. What’s being done to correct some of this? Is realignment the system whereby we’re going to start putting non-violent offenders in county programs or jails? What is being done to address some of this?

WALDMAN: So first of all, I want to make you understand that realignment isn’t happening because there has been a realization on behalf of the government that the system we have is unfair and abusive. Realignment is not a solution to this terrible problem. Realignment is financial imperative.

But the one positive outcome of the economic disaster this country finds itself in is that this prison system that we have ourselves in is terribly inefficient financially. We spent $20,000-30,000 a year to imprison someone who committed no violent offense. And the collateral damage of having to send their kids through the foster system, and the effects of the foster system on their children. All these cascading economic consequences.

Now, with governments so strapped for cash, there’s this realization like, “You know what? Now we might have an improved system that improves public safety that actually saves us money.”

LEVI: This is an opportunity to encourage governments to put their money in more effective ways. And realignment can hopefully be that. It’s important to keep our eye on that to make sure that realignment doesn’t send people from the California prison system to the county jail system.

WALDMAN: And that’s also an overcrowded, underfunded and terrible system, collapsing under the weight of its own overpopulation.

LEVI: Also, there’s far less oversight in county jail than the California prison system. And it’s way more difficult to try to address abuse in the county jail system.

What we want to do is send people back into their communities, and to do it in a way that’s much more cost effective, that allows them to reunite and rebuild their families. That’s something that Justice Now is working on, and the ACLU of Northern California has been very active in saying that it’s a great first step. And that’s something that we, too, as citizens here need to make sure that we are having our voice heard at county levels. We don’t want to expand the jail system; we want to put people into alternative living arrangements that allows them to be closer to their families, get the parenting skill sets they need, the drug rehabilitation they need, the therapy to deal with the sexual abuse and domestic violence they have experienced. If we don’t address any of those things we aren’t going to have any long-term change.

KERNAN: This is a really hard book to read. It’s hard to see this stuff, to know what’s happening, to hear the voices of these women. What do you want listeners to know?

LEVI: I think the most important thing to realize is that people in prison, mean and women, are not a kind of “other” that need to terrify you. I think every time I leave the prison from visiting someone, I have this overwhelming sensation of, “There but for the grace of good fortune and economic security, go I.”

The people in prison are just people. They aren’t terrifying. The majority of them are not dangerous.

I think it’s almost a truism to say that you can judge a society by the way it treats the most powerless. We as a society have chosen to abuse so profoundly the people who have the least power. A woman who was sexually abused as a child, who committed a non-violent offense, who lost her children, who’s incarcerated now for decades, like Theresa. Theresa entered the prison system in her late teens and she’s now getting out in her 40′s and she never, ever committed a violent crime. She committed property offenses and prostitution offenses, but this is someone we’ve chosen to incarcerate under horribly abusive circumstances for over 20 years.

I don’t recommend reading the book in one night. I recommend reading the stories one by one. I think that if your compassion is not awakened by it, there is something deeply wrong with you.

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